... and how to make the most out of it to Expand Business Internationally

Who are we and whom do we address?

EDM Publications is a publishing company, born in 1989 and based in France, which puts out a number of international business newsletters and special reports in English, the international language of business. The name stands for European Decision-Makers Publications, defining its main target.

In a fast-paced economic environment where PREMIUM MARKET KNOWLEDGE AND MARKET INTELLIGENCE + TIME SAVINGS = PROFITS, EDM Publications offers pure information for the busy executive who wants to expand his or her business internationally, especially in Europe.

For this primary target and for others, we produce four cutting-edge international business newsletters that cover the following sectors:

Sporting Goods

Outdoor Sports Products

Non-athletic Footwear

Eyewear and other optical products

We also produce special country-specific market research reports on the sporting goods sector. We have put out so far reports on the sporting goods market (10 product categories) in every European country and in India. We have also published a series of more specific reports on the golf apparel and footwear market in many countries in Europe and Africa. We are currently preparing a major in-depth report on the sporting goods market in China.

Our business newsletters cover the following topics, among others, with a focus on companies operating in the European countries and the BRICs:

Market statistics

Financial results of companies from all over the world

Company takeovers and mergers

Significant investments

International expansion

Other strategic developments

Analysis of new business models in distribution and retailing

Management changes

Legal and institutional matters

Trade shows and other events

All our business publications are all widely read and highly respected in their fields because of their unique features. Like the members of a special club, our subscribers enjoy numerous benefits that help them to maximize sales and profits, setting them apart from the competition thanks to a better and deeper knowledge of the market in Europe and the rest of the world.

We make a big distinction between INFORMATION and PROMOTION. We don’t promote anybody. We are completely at the service of our readers, who pay us to get unbiased, exclusive and condensed premium information. We are not at the service of advertisers. We are not at the service of companies that wish to use the media to promote their products, their services, their owners or their managers.

- While other publications are partly or completely financed by advertising, ours are only financed by subscriptions.

We deliver pure information – We look for new information from many different countries in many languages from all kinds of sources, including press releases. We cream it off, taking off any redundant phrases that promote specific people or companies. When the facts and figures are important, we spend additional time to verify them and to add other useful details. We deliver this purified information in English, the international language of business that today’s and tomorrow’s managers need to speak in an increasingly globalized economy.

We don’t focus on any particular country. We have reporters contributing information from many different countries, mostly in Europe, but also in Asia and other parts of the world. While many other publications are national, ours are international because the market has become more global. We address decision-makers who market their products internationally or sell the products of companies based in other countries.

We have an international scope, but we focus on the European market and on global players operating in Europe, although we also cover other markets as well. We have recently intensified our research on the big and fast-growing BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China). We also report on interesting case studies involving smaller companies. With the European market becoming more and more integrated, we provide hard-to-get information on major retailers, buying groups, and suppliers in all the European countries, sparing you the trouble of going through dozens of different national trade magazines. We report on new corporate development strategies, management and distribution changes, changes in production and sourcing, investments, mergers and acquisitions, financial results, market statistics, foreign trade issues, unusual merchandising and marketing action, trade fairs and legal cases. We carry no pictures and we rarely report on new products, unless they are truly innovative, leaving this job to more generalist trade magazines.

– We go beyond press releases, spending a lot of time to give you exclusive facts and data that really interest you. While other publications are mainly meant to promote your products or those of your competitors, ours are meant to give you the information and the important details that you need to optimize your own business.

We deliver exclusive information – Our experienced, professional reporters don’t just rewrite press releases. They often get exclusive information from the decision-makers themselves, many of whom are members of our exclusive information club who trust us and respect us. This type of information gives you a competitive edge. Some of our articles are on success stories or stories on marketing that are meant to inform you and to inspire you – not to influence you in any ways. Our information is more useful for you because it is objective and because it goes deeper than the press releases in generic newspapers or on the Internet.

– You can track down changes in management and distribution that will give you ideas for new business contacts in any particular European country and elsewhere. As a subscriber, you can also ask us for a key contact or for quality advice.

Classified ads – As a subscriber, you are entitled to post up to three classified ads to look for new managers, distributors, partners, employers, etc., knowing that your message is circulated very widely at high levels of the decision-making hierarchy.

– Each issue is divided into two sections – one section for the longer and more important, significant and exclusive articles, and another section for so-called News Briefs and Short Stops – articles that we have chosen to condense into one paragraph or one sentence to save your time. The News Briefs and Short Stops are grouped into sub-sections for different kinds of subjects, such as new corporate developments, changes of management or distribution, retail development, results and statistics, allowing you to concentrate on one or more fields of interest for these numerous, additional facts and figures.

We deliver portable information – We don’t produce thick and heavy magazines, full of advertisements and photos. Our newsletters can slip easily into a briefcase, a handbag or a pocket to be read when you have some extra time in a taxi, on the train, on the airplane, at the station, at the airport or between meetings.

A dual reading format – If you subscribe to the printed edition, which is sent to you by regular priority mail, you only get one format. It features the main stories on three columns and the shorter ones on two columns, followed by the classified ads. If you subscribe to the e-mail edition, you get the same information immediately, and you can download it in two alternative ways: a pdf with the same newsletter in the same format on three and columns, which you can print out and read whenever you want to – or a special e-format on a single column that is easier to read on the screen of a computer or a smartphone. While it has more pages, the information is the same, and the main articles can be accessed through a hyperlink by clicking on the title in the summary.

Note: Our recently launched Outdoor Industry Compass, which is complement of SGI Europe concentrating on the market for outdoor sports products, is only available in the e-mail edition, but it gives you the alternative to print it out or to consult it on a computer or a smartphone.

- Our publications take a lot less of your time than many other media that have many more pages or that require many clicks and a lot of time to open files on the internet.

Each regular issue of any of our publications has only between 8 and 12 pages for a quick read, but it features more than 40-60 articles, more than most of the other periodicals in the sector. We don’t have to fill lots of pages with words because we have to come out with something on a particular date and to balance out tons of advertising. We only come out when we have really interesting and solid information for you.

Our business newsletters give you a lot of information in only a few pages, but you don’t have to read everything! You can skip what is not essential for you or reserve it for reading at a later stage. Furthermore, the publisher gives you some useful tools that can help save more of your precious time:

The summary on the front page gives you the number of the page where you can find an article that really interests you in the first section. It also lists the names of most of the other companies mentioned throughout the issue. You can immediately see at a glance what might interest you. In the electronic version of the newsletter, you can click on a headline in the summary and go straight to the related article.

The headlines in the text and inside the News Briefs, which are divided by subject (corporate, management, retail, results, marketing, etc.) can further help you to find the most interesting articles.

We use bold letters for names of companies and people the first time that we mention them in an article. You can then decide to select only the articles that report on the types of companies or the people that interest you the most.

We make ample use of underlining in the main stories, distilling the most significant facts and figures that could interest different types of readers. This can cut your reading time in half. If you want to go deeper, you can read the whole paragraph or the whole article.

Two of our newsletters – SGI Europe and The Outdoor Industry Compass – have some common contents. If you subscribe to both, a special symbol at the beginning of an article in one of these two newsletters will remind you that the same story was already carried in the other publication in the same format or in a more detailed version, so you don’t have to read it over again. The symbol followed by a + encourages you to read the new version because it is more extensive or more updated than the previous one.

Subscribers can retrieve past information quickly and easily – After their subscription has been paid, subscribers get a personal password that gives them entry to a Members-Only page. Here they can download any of the last three issues of the publication that they subscribe to. They also can use their log-in to access the Electronic Archives of that particular publication. By typing in one or two key words (e.g. Nike and Italy), and by choosing a particular timeframe, they will see all the articles published in the last few weeks, months or years. They can also bookmark them or print them out. The Members-Only page allows them also to check the status of their account, finding out when their subscription expires.

Subscribers can place executive-oriented classified ads into our newsletters to look for financial partners, for an important new challenge in the industry or for top executives, distributors, agents, etc. These advertisements are printed in our newsletter and are reserved for subscribers. We don’t charge anything for them except for those in SGI Europe, which is our most widely circulated newsletter.

As an extra benefit, we run a hotline, exclusively reserved for subscribers. You can call us to obtain background information, advice for strategic decisions, contact information, tips for executive recruitment, acquisitions or business opportunities, or customized information for specific needs.

We publish our newsletters only in English, the international language of business. We tried once to offer an Italian-language version of SHOE INTELLIGENCE, but we subsequently dropped it because we did not have enough subscribers in Italy, where 80% of the shoe production is exported anyhow.

We don’t publish our newsletters at precise dates. We tend to come out only when we have solid information, and sometimes we have so much of it that we bundle two issues into one. Occasionally, when are swamped with quarterly financial reports and other news, we come out with a so-called “double issue” of more than 12 or 14 pages.

While we don’t come out at set dates, and while two issues are sometimes bundled into one, we guarantee a minimum number of issues per year (and we have generally delivered one or more extra issues at the end of each year as bonus to our readers) :

SGI Europe – 40 issues a year

The Outdoor Industry Compass - 25 issues a year

Shoe Intelligence – 24 issues a year

Eyewear Intelligence – 15 issues a year

Occasionally, we send out an e-mail blast to our subscribers to announce an important new development.

A small portion of the contents of SGI Europe – generally less than one-quarter of it - is made available in a condensed format to our readers on a daily basis through ispo.com. This is intended as a service to the sporting goods industry and as a teaser to win over new subscribers.

You can find out more about our publications by going to our Order Form.
If you have not received the publication for more than six months, you may order a free sample copy or a FREE TRIAL before you decide to order a subscription.

We also offer an unconditional GUARANTEE when you take out a subscription:
If at any time you feel that you are not getting the expected return on this small investment, you may cancel your subscription and request a full refund for all the issues that have yet to be mailed out to you.

Prices are given before value-added tax, which is due for French clients and clients in other member countries of the European Union who don’t have a VAT number. Prices are subject to change from time to time.

Our newsletters and special reports are delivered only by first-class priority mail or by e-mail. If you want to receive by e-mail, you must sign a Single-User Copyright Agreement. However, we encourage you to discuss a Multi-user Subscription with us for other officials and offices of your company, involving a small supplement to the regular subscription fee.

Our business newsletters are only financed by subscriptions. As we are not financed by advertising, they cannot be copied, translated, faxed, or delivered otherwise to anyone else without the publisher’s consent.

EDM Publications was founded in 1989 by Eugenio Di Maria, a multi-lingual journalist, born in Italy, who has worked in Europe and in North America for The New York Times, the Associated Press and the Fairchild Publications of New York. He has been stationed in France since 1978. He acts as publisher and as editor of most of EDM Publications’ business newsletters.

The editorial team of EDM Publications is a group of twelve journalists and researchers of various nationalities, located in different countries and speaking different languages. Together, they bring to the table a combined journalistic experience of more than 100 years.

The main researcher is Barbara Smit. Born in the Netherlands, educated in the U.K. and living in France, she has written books on the history of Heineken and on the history of Adidas and Puma.

Within the journalistic team, Markus Huber, editor of The Outdoor Industry Compass, deserves a special mention. He has been a senior reporter for two major German sporting goods industry magazines, SAZ and Sportfachhandel.

At the administrative and operational level, the key personality at EDM Publications is Pierre-Marie Bernard, a French executive who has worked for publications in the sporting goods and eyewear sectors.